[lug] Thoughts on upgrading to CentOS 7

[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 25 Mar 2018 09:32:30 -0600
Rob Nagler <nagler at bivio.biz> wrote:

> I've been in a very long process of upgrading from CentOS 6 to 7.
> Some of the work has been in implementing a new config mgmt system,
> but most of the time has been in debugging changes between CentOS 6
> and 7 as well as not remembering odd behaviors of classic Linux tools
> like logrotate. The biggest change is systemd, of course, which has
> quite a bit of trickle down. However, we are containerizing some
> older services, and that has had unexpected effects, too. I'm just
> writing some of my thoughts fwiw, imiho, and tl;dr. :)

An alternative would be to see this as an opportunity to explore other
distros. Plenty of distros have decided not to require their users to
move to the controversial systemd.

In 2015 I switched from Debian to Void Linux. Out of the box, Void
inits with runit: Not systemd nor the much maligned (I think
undeservedly) sysvinit. After two months initting with runit, you
wonder why you ever thought of the init process as complex at all. It
starts and supervises daemons, reaps zombies, and listens for a few
strategic signals: Simplicity personified. Run scripts are almost
always less than 10 lines.

If Void Linux doesn't float your boat, consider Devuan, which is Debian
without the switch to systemd. If you don't like sysvinit, be confident
in the fact that it's pretty easy to replace sysvinit with superior
init systems like runit or s6. This is *not* true of systemd, which
contains several "poison pills" making it extremely difficult to
replace.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
April 2018 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques
     of the Successful Technologist
http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques